My Tuesday with Morrie.. Thank you Professor Morrie Schwartz.
March 13th 2007. It was a Tuesday.
I met Professor Morrie Schwartz.
I sat in for a lesson in his class. The subject was on The Meaning of Life. No qualification was needed, no textbooks required, no tests or examinations be given, no projects to hand in.
It was the best lesson I ever learned.
Indeed it was.
We talked. No... He talked, I listened.
He talked about the world.. how it became uncompassionate and cold.. why everyone seems to operate under the same set of thinking and behaviour.. Just because the world said so?
How our values was advertised pervertedly by the world.. The perverted values of being slim to be beautiful, wearing that certain designer's wear to be sexy, being rich to be a winner in life.. What happens to the person who couldn't slim down? What happens to the person who cannot afford designer's wear? What happens to the person who's only an average income earner?
How the system whereby we lived in became too commercialised with twisted cultures of wrong information.. The twisted culture that promoted bigger paychecks, bigger cars, bigger houses.. The system wanted us to believe in that, it kept repeating in forms of media, papers, magazines.. untill no one talked about bigger hearts for the less fortunate or spending time caring the elderly and homeless.. Not anymore..
He talked about how money became the God of the world.. people worshiped it.. they would put their entire life into getting more of it.. they would sacrificed anything just to be able to possess great abundance of it.. because those who possessed tremendous amount of it would be worshiped and get the nods from those in the world.. and for those who don't would be looked down upon.. Since when monetary status determined the category of people you belonged to?
He talked about how we were afraid to let go ourselves into different emotional conditions.. we would held back ourselves from emotions that we had never encountered, we feared about that.. we couldn't let go and let the emotions embraced us.. we should.. but only momentarily... we must let ourselves experience the entire process of emotions running through us... be it pain, happyness, hurt, loneliness, jealousy... but we must detach ourselves from it once we had done experiencing the emotions and moved on.. dwelling in the same emotions would not get us anywhere in life.. Life goes on, so must we..
He talked about family.. how sometimes we don't say or do the things that we should to show affections to our family.. because we felt embarrassed saying or doing that.. we don't openly display our affection to our parents or tell them that how much we loved them openly.. its perfectly alright to behave that way.. because most of us was brought up that way.. but why must we wait till there isn't much time left with them that we would outrightly display our affection and confessed the words that could have spoken much earlier?
He talked about marriage to me... I couldn't fathom it at first but it dawned on me much later into conversation when he said that many people don't know what they really want in a partner. They don't even know themselves, so how could they know who they were marrying? Marriage is more than just a piece of paper and two sets of rings.. Its a whole lot of compromising, communicating, understanding, acceptance, respect and most important the same values in life.. there will be tests after tests... but things would only get better each time with tests being accomplished.. Love each other or perish.. thats what he said to me.
He went on talking about regrets and forgiveness.. Regrets I had a few... well, maybe a handful... We were often too caught up in our daily life that we forgotten to stop and see the little details happening in our life, we were too focused on what's important like work and money... we neglected the people around us, especially our family, our loved ones.. they don't need our money... they need our time. We would regret not giving them our time when we lose them..
We had too much ego in us most of the times to forgive others who had done us wrong in the past... Why must we lament the lost chance to forgive them when they were gone? By then its too late to make peace with our inner being.. But how to achieve that? I was confused untill he told me to forgive ourselves to forgive others. Make peace with oneself and others around you.
Finally he ended the lesson with the topic on death and how love goes on after that.. He talked about how death was regarded as fearful to many.. because many out there were living unhappily, living in despair, living with unsatisfied life, living with unfinished business, living with broken dreams.. they feared aging.. they feared death.. they feared that they would not be remembered after they passed on from this world.. leaving behind incomplete tasks in life.. They would only learn how to live their life right when they learned how to die.. they would do things differently... they would no longer be afraid of death.. by then they would be more focused on doing what they really wanted to instead of impermanent essentials.. Death could only stop a life, it couldn't stop a relationship.. Love goes on after you die.. thats what they should focused on.. because love is the only rational act, between the struggle of rights and wrongs only love would win it all..
Lesson ended with Professor Morrie Schwartz breathed his last.
I left the class with tears smudging all over my face.
He changed my life entirely.
You should have met Morrie too.
Thank you Morrie.